Читать книгу Woman and Puppet, Etc - Pierre Louys - Страница 7

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Three years ago I had not the grey hairs that you now see, and was thirty-seven years of age, though I felt but twenty-two. I do not know precisely when my youth passed from me, and it is hard for me to realize that it has reached its end. People have told you that I was one of the gadabouts of passion. That is false. I respected Love and I never degraded her. Scarcely ever have I caressed a woman whom I did not passionately love. If I were to name or number these loves to you you would be surprised for they were but a few. I easily remember that I have never loved a blonde. I have always ignored those pale objects of worship. What is furthermore true, is that, for me, love has not been a mere pleasure or pastime. It has been my very life. If I were to take out of my life all the thoughts and actions that had the woman for their sole end, there would remain nothing but emptiness—space. This much said, I may now recount to you what I know of Concha Perez.

I go first to three years and a half ago, and winter-time. I returned from France, a bitter cold journey too, one twenty-sixth of December, in the express that passes the bridge of the Bidassoa.

The snow, already very thick at Biarritz and Saint Sebastian, rendered almost impracticable the traversing of the Guipuzcoa. The train stopped two hours at Zumarraga, for snow to be cleared away. Later an avalanche stopped us for three hours. All night this snow trouble went on. Sounds were deadened by the fall, and so we were travelling in a silence to which danger gave a touch of grandeur.

The morning of the morrow found us at Avila. We were eight hours late, and had fasted for a day. We learnt at last that we should be “hung up” at that place four days! Do you know Avila by any chance? It is the place that they should send those people to who rave about Old Spain being dead and done with. The inn I stopped at, Don Quixote could easily have used also.

In resuming my journey I went third-class, for a change, in a compartment nearly full of Spanish women. There were really four compartments with partitions about shoulder high.

Well, we were passing the Sierra of Guadarrama, and suddenly the train stopped again. We were blocked by another avalanche. When we realized this there was a general request made to a gitana present to dance.

She did dance: a woman about thirty, of the ugly gipsy type, but she seemed to have fire in the fingers that flashed the castanets and fire in her limbs. Everyone knelt and listened, or beat time with their hands. I now noticed in the corner facing me a young girl, who was singing.

She wore a rose-coloured skirt, that made me guess she was from Andalucia—that colour-loving province.

Her shoulders and bosom were swathed in a creamy shawl, and she had a throat scarf of white foulard to protect her from the cold. The whole carriage already knew that she was trained at the Convent of San José d’Avila, was going to Madrid to find her mother, and bore the name of Concha Perez.

Her voice was singularly penetrating. She sang without moving her body about, hands in shawl, eyes closed.

The songs she was singing were not taught her by the Sisters, I can be quite sure. They were the little songs of four lines, only loved by the people. Into these quatrains they put much passion. I can hear again in memory the caress in her voice as she sang—

“Thy bed is of jasmins,

Thy sheets of white roses;

Of lilies thy pillows,

And a dark rose there poses.”

There followed an angry scene between her and the gipsy. They fought, but I stepped between, for I loathe to see women fighting. They do it badly and dangerously. When it was all over, a gendarme came, and after slapping Concha upon the cheeks put her in another compartment. The train now went forward again, and my companions began to sleep. The image of the little singer tormented me. Where had he put her? I leant over the barrier of my carriage, and saw that she was there, close enough to touch. She was sleeping like a tired child. I saw the closed lids, the long lashes, the little nose and two small lips, that seemed to be at one and the same time infantile and sensual. Gazing for a long time at those amazing lips, I wondered whether their dream movements were recalling the breast that nursed her or the lips of a lover.

Daylight came, and with it the end of the journey. I aided the little Concha to get together six parcels, and offered to carry them but was refused. She managed with them somehow, and ran off. I soon lost sight of her.

You see, do you not, this first meeting was insignificant, almost vague. She had interested and amused me for a little while. That was really all. Soon I ceased to think of her at all.